Engineer the revenue process, not just the lead source.
Comp plans, CRM configuration, territory logic, queue design and reporting reps will actually use.
Clawback is enforcement. The early-cancel rate is the coaching signal.
Residential reps are paid on installs, monthly in arrears, with a clawback if the customer disconnects inside the accountability window. MDU and business split the commission — half at sale, half at install — because a long cycle would otherwise leave a rep unpaid for months.
The more valuable use of the metric is diagnostic. A rep with an abnormal early-cancel rate is almost always setting the wrong expectations at the sale, and that is fixable through training. Clawback enforces accountability; the metric tells you who needs coaching.
Most operators set the clawback window for administrative convenience rather than to an actual customer-behavior threshold. That is worth an afternoon of analysis and almost nobody does it.
When the executive view and the ground view disagree, every plan is wrong.
The most consequential number in a growing operator is the forward RFI passings forecast, because media spend, sales hiring, CRM territories and commission targets all key off it.
We publish a single defensible view of passings, RFI and pace, and get the organization planning against that view rather than around it.
The second job is making the reports usable. The familiar failure: sales requests a report, it comes back late and unintuitive, iterating with a team that does not share the urgency feels more expensive than the payoff — so the fix never happens and the bad report becomes the number of record.